The Effectiveness of Two-Sided Users Activity for Sustainable competitiveness: Findings from B2B Electronic Market

With the prosperity of worldwide B2B electronic market, it is necessary to explore the role of its users’ behavior but not only the user base effect on their sustainable competitiveness. The quality of users’ behavior, which is indicated by the activity of two-sided users, are critical important for B2B electronic market makers as there is “chicken and egg problem” between these two users. In the context of B2B electronic market, we examine the relationship of users’ activity of two sides and platform longitudinal competitive ability with VAR model. Furthermore, we investigate how advertising strategies improve the active degree of different user behaviors. The results show that the sellers’ activity will improve the platform sustainable competitiveness more effectively than buyers’ activity. Moreover, the authors find that the external customers which attracted by adverting (search advertising and event marketing in this paper) can significantly influence the internal users’ activity. These findings emphasize more exploration should be pay attention to the quality of users’ behavior in two-sided markets, and provide guidance related to advertising strategy.